OnePiece

Software Reviews by OnePiece

The reviews and opinions below are posted by SnapFiles visitors. They do not necessarily reflect our opinion, and they are solely based upon the experience of individual users.

Crystal Security

It has a long road ahead

I appreciate free software, and especially free security software. But Crystal Security undoubtedly has a lot of room to grow, and by that I don't mean its features, rather its reliability and quality. The program is purposed as a supplemental security software in addition to your regular antivirusantimalware, and it fits that purpose well. But it is making too many mistakes. It flags completely valid programs (ones that are listed on this site) as malware, and immediately quarantines them. What is worse, when it comes to restoring these from the quarantine, it freezes, and upon killrestart it will show the quarantine as empty. (But, of course, the quarantined files are NOT restored.) The false positives are all caused by its "dynamic engine", so even if 30 cloud search engines + its own static and heuristic engines found the file clean, it will flag the file infected just 'cos the dynamic engine says so. A very flawed design decision. You can fortunately switch off the dynamic engine, or raise the detection threshold, but hen why is it there in the first place? Hopefully in the future these problems will be dealt with, until then, be careful. Price: Free

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GlassWire

A flashy network monitoring tool

This is a revision of my previous favorable review, after the changes that version 2 brought. GlassWire is essentially a network activity monitoring tool that will inform you when your applications first access the net (in- and outbound connections are both detected), or they change (e.g. are updated or perhaps modified by malware). You are informed about these events in small popup windows. In addition, you can see the active applications and their connections, the destination of these connections, etc. The usual stuff. If one noticed anything suspicious, they could block the corresponding program from accessing the net -- in the previous version. Thus it had some simplified "firewall-like" functionality. This was removed from the free edition starting with version 2, leaving you with a fancy network monitoring tool that consumes a bit more resources than its alternatives, and displays an annoying popup urging you to upgrade. Not recommended anymore. Price: Free

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LibreOffice

A fantastic office suite

LibreOffice never fails to impress me with its rapid development cycle and continuous addition of (useful!) new features. By now it already incorporates all essential and convenience (like "hide empty space") features I like in other office suites, and there are some "hidden" gems in it, like the excellent LibreLogo programming language to create drawings. Stability-wise it is on par or better than Microsoft Office. Its user interface uses the now "old school" multi-toolbar and menu-oriented access, but for me, as a long time computer user, it is a plus. (Still, since the new 5.2 version they even implemented a single-toolbar mode.) Interoperability with Microsoft Office can be a bit of a problem, but it is possible. It is best to use LibreOffice on its own. Since it is multi-platform, collaborating on Windows and Linux can be done seamlessly. One of the best freeware ever created. Price: Free

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Tresorit

Good, but limited

The main purpose of Tresorit is to provide a cloud storage protected with strong cryptography for sensitive data. It fulfills its promise, and I am convinced that the level of security it provides for free is adequate, even unmatched. Why can I not recommend this service if it is so good then? Because of its limitations. Not the size of the available storage -- 3GB is not much but for free it is acceptable -- rather the fact that the number of devices it can sync with is limited. Not only limited, but VERY limited: the free plan only allows 3 devices to be synced. This ruins the whole service to me. I have a work and a home desktop computer, a notepad, a tablet and a mobile phone (I think such a config is not so uncommon), but I can share my files only between 3 of these using Tresorit. Of course, one always requires an important but sensitive file on the device they could not include in the sync. So my advice: use it only if 3 devices are enough for you, otherwise use a normal cloud storage with an additional automatic encryption program like CryptSync. Price: Free Trial ($12.50)

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Pale Moon

Still good

Reading the latest reviews of Pale Moon (hereafter PM) I felt like writing a review, since I think writing this browser off is a mistake. I recently returned to PM after being disappointed in Chromium-based browsers (Opera and SRWare Iron in particular). Although PM has its flaws (coming from the Firefox heritage, like high memory consumption), all-in-all I am satisfied with it and use it exclusively. With regard to the incompatibilities mentioned in the previous reviews: as of now (Sep 2015) I don't really feel this a big problem. All of my favourite extensions work (I have atm. 105 extensions enabled and 30 disabled, these all work flawlessly). There are a few web sites that misbehave, but not more than with Chromium. Windows XP compatibility is not broken, you only need to use the Atom targeted builds. So I cannot agree with these criticisms, and recommend Pale Moon to everyone who wants to use a less bloated and more customisable browser. Price: Free

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AIMP

Highly recommended

I would like to 'cancel out' the previous negative review, which (according to my personal experience) must be due to a rare, specific problem. I am a faithful user of AIMP since many years, and I install it on all of my systems (even on my mobile devices). Never encountered any problems. I use Foobar as well (love that program too), but personally I cannot tell the difference between the playback quality of the two, for me both sound equally good. BTW, AIMP uses the BASS library for playback (a well-known and widely applied library that is freeware for non-commercial uses). To praise the program a bit more: it has very rich functionality, built-in support for ReplayGain and normalization, good equalizer and sound effects, CUE support (I don't know many programs that have that), audio converter and tag editor, and many more features. It has very nice skins, and uses minimal resources during playback. It can do out of the box that Foobar can only do using plugins. Price: Free

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System Explorer

Excellent

System Explorer is really an excellent utility I have installed on all of my computers. It provides every kind of information you could imagine about your operating system and its processes. The reason I like it most is that it is easy on the resources, has a nice little task bar icon showing the actual CPU load, and hovering that icon I get a pretty little auto-hiding window containing the most important parameters, such as the memory consumption. So for me it is primarily a system monitor, but in case I see anything funny going on, I can use its rich functionality to find and terminate the misbehaving process or service, if needed. Price: Free

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WinDock

A bit tedious to set up, but works flawlessly

WinDock does one thing, but it does that very well. It has a really flexible configuration system. For sure, configuration is a bit tedious to use -- still, you only need to use it once. Fortunately, the setup you created can be exported and later imported, so it really is a one-time task. When the program is set up, it is a joy to use and (so far) it worked well for me with any kind of window. Important is the multi-monitor support. In fact, you can create completely different setups for the individual monitors, which is a rare trait. The set of features could be more comprehensive, but one can combine this with other freeware to cover every window management need. Price: Free

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AquaSnap

Nice program for a single monitor environment

AquaSnap (the freeware version) is an easy to use program with a nice set of features -- as long as you want to use it in a single monitor environment. For multi-monitor support, however, you need to buy the professional version (which is not expensive by the way). Still, for me, it is a real letdown. So, if you do not mind the few (not so important) features missing from the freeware version, and do not need multi-monitor support, then I can fully recommend this program. If you need multi-monitor support and can afford to pay a few bucks, then buy its professional version, it is worth it. But if you want a good real freeware that has flexible configuration, and can easily dock your open windows into predefined positions on one or multiple monitors, then you can find a better program here at SnapFiles in the Desktop Tools category. Price: Free

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ReNamer Lite

The lite version has become too restricted

This program used to be my top choice of mass renaming files for complex and difficult jobs. Its flexible "sequence of rules" approach really made the difference for me. Not anymore though. Since version 1.72, the author decided to introduce a "Lite vs. Pro" licensing model for his products. The result is a set of heavy restrictions: in the case of ReNamer Lite both the number of presets and rules has a max. limit of 5. Although these may be enough for simple tasks, but forget complex jobs. So my advice is to either try to find an older, unrestricted freeware version of ReNamer on the net, or choose another mass renamer. Price: Free

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Memtest86

The best there is

This program, as well as memtest86+, are the best memory (RAM) test programs you can find. It implements the most important memory testing algorithms (there are more advanced algorithms out there, but those would take much more time and are suited to specific types of memory only), so you get a quite good coverage of memory faults. For some time this version was not supported, but recently Passmark took up support so it should be up-to-date again. Use either this (I didn't have any problem of burning this to a bootable CD, although nowadays I rather put this to a bootable USB disk), or memtest86+, and you cannot go wrong. Price: Free

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bmpPacker

This software has its uses

...but not as a steganography tool for sure. In this sense the description of the program is a bit deceiving. I know at least one useful application though: some organizations have very strict security controls on email communication, so they do not accept e.g. Microsoft Word, Excel, PDF, or even encrypted ZIP files (that they cannot uncompress and check) as attachments. In such cases this little tool can come very handy. And in any case, it has nice solid encryption algorithms, so it is useful as a general-purpose encryption tool, too. Price: Free

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Software Reviews by OnePiece

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